Adobe Illustrator is really expensive. Microsoft Acrylic is in a free beta, but unreasonably buggy. Are there any similar Windows programs that are cheap (preferably free) that will give me a decent percentage of the features that Illustrator has? Thanks in advance.

You could see if InkScape works for you. I've never used it myself.

I just recommended Inkscape in another thread. It's really a terrific free alternative to Illustrator if you're on a budget.

I use Inkscape for all my art (there's the beginnings of a tutorial linked in my signature). I can't compare it to Illustrator as I've never used that (although I'm sure it's considerably more powerful), but Inkscape has enough features to make it extremely usable for vector art work.